Black Friday.Typically regarded as the first day of the Christmas shopping season, stores offer special prices and deals that result in a mad dash of frenzied shoppers the day after Thanksgiving. Some people dread the crowds and traffic, but almost a third of Americans in 2017 braved the mob to shop for Christmas gifts for loved ones or find sweet deals.

When I talk to car dealers about their digital marketing strategy, a lot of times I hear something along the lines of, “We’ve gotten along just fine doing radio spots, TV ads and direct mail, why do we need digital marketing now?”

They do make a good point. What they’ve been doing was good enough in the past, so it should still be enough… right?

Amazon, Spotify, Lyft, Purple,Dollar Shave Club. You have heard of all these companies and chances are you use at least one of them on a regular basis.

All these products made a major splash when they debuted in the marketplace and many of them have grown into multi-million, or even billion-dollar companies. So, why are all these products so successful?

When you stop to think about it, are they really offering anything new?

So, you’ve decided you want to step up your digital marketing game and bring in some outside help to reach more customers and sell more cars. You’ve seen ads for, and received dozens of emails from companies that claim they can help you do just that, so how do you choose one?

A shopper comes into your dealership. They ask one of your sales people the price on a model, the salesperson gives it to them they turn around and walk out the door. Sound familiar?

The thing is, it’s really not the salesperson’s fault. With the world getting smaller and smaller and consumers having more options, car shoppers are visiting fewer dealerships and instead spending most of the buying process online. The convenience this offers them has caused shoppers to want to spend less time talking to sales people and immediately push for the end-game: what is the price?

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

-Sun Tzu’s Art of War

Other dealerships in your area may not be your enemies and you’re not exactly at war with them. However, we can all agree that they are your competitors meaning there is a competition, and in every competition, there is a winner and a loser.

In a previous blog post we discussed Convenience as a Pricing Strategy. In that post we talked about how instead of discounting your services you can actually charge premiums by making your dealership more convenient for customers.

One of the most common questions we get from dealers (especially in response to that post), is whether or not they should be using coupons to incentivize customers with cheap oil changes and other services they offer. In the previous post we were not saying that coupons or discounts are a bad thing. Coupons can be extremely effective when used the right way.

Today I want to try and give a little food for thought about your pricing and sales strategy by talking about one of my favorite subjects: pricing psychology. A good understanding of pricing psychology is a powerful tool for dealers because it shows that in the end it’s not the price that drives the customers behavior, it’s the perception of the price. In a sense, every pricing manager is also a perception manager.

About Us

Edifice Automotive is dedicated to one thing: connecting you to more customers to allow you to sell and service more cars. We believe we do this best by sending the Right Person the Right Message at the Right Time. We are partnered with dealers and dealer groups across the country using our capabilities to help them dominate their market.